Welcome Reddit refugees!

We are happy to see that many of you are exploring Lemmy after Reddit announced changes to its API policy. I maintain this project alongside @dessalines.

Lemmy is similar to Reddit in many ways, but there is also a major difference: Its not only a single website, but consists of many different websites which are interconnected through federation. This is achieved with the ActivityPub protocol which is also used by Mastodon. It means that you can sign up on any Lemmy instance to interact with users and communities on other instances. The project website has a list of instances which all have their own rules and administrators. We recommend that you sign up on one of them, to avoid overt centralization on lemmy.ml.

Another difference compared to Reddit is that Lemmy is open source, and not funded by any company. For this reason it relies on volunteer work to make the project better, whether it's programming, design, documentation, translating, reporting issues or others. See the contributing guide to get started. You can also donate to support development.

We also recommend that you read the documentation. It explains how Lemmy works and how to setup your own Lemmy instance. Running an instance gives you full control over the rules and moderation, and prevents us developers from having any influence. Especially large communities that want to use Lemmy should host their own instance, because existing Lemmy instances would easily be overwhelmed by a large number of new users.

Enjoy your time here! If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or in the Matrix chat.

a1studmuffin,

I'm very impressed with Lemmy and the fediverse in general. What a promising future for social media, especially after a decade of capitalism and centralisation slowly eroding the integrity of every commercial equivalent.

Oka,

I have a pretty good feeling that lemmy.ml is going to be the next reddit.com. Sure, there's different instances of the federation, but this one seems more developed than most of the others.

you can mention or message anyone on any website using their address.

So someone on a Mastadon community of servers could ping me in their server/website and I'd get a notification?

And can posts on one Lemmy server also show up in another Lemmy server? Like could a post be made here, braodcast into the lemmy-verse, and appear on another Lemmy website?

dessalines,

Correct, they just have to @ you.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah, it looks like it. I saw a message yesterday from someone posting a toot on Mastodon that showed up here, and I replied and they confirmed they got it. So I think they're all connected somehow.

reliving,

Yup, posting this from Mastodon. I love this integration. Curious to see what's possible with this.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

So are you able to read the Lemmy posts and comment threads using a mastodon app? Or through a mastodon implementation?

reliving,

I'm using the official Mastodon app. Browsing Lemmy communities is a bit awkward this way since they're essentially just another account retooting every user's comments and replies in threads. But I can search for individual comments through permalinks. Your response also triggered a regular notification in Mastodon.

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

That's interesting. I'll have to login to one of my mastodon accounts and follow some lemmy instances I guess, to see what you're talking about?

AccurateGoose,

Twitter makes a series of bad and user-unfriendly decisions, causing many of it's users to flee to Mastodon. Now Reddit makes a series of bad and user-unfriendly decisions, causing many of it's users to flee to Lemmy. When will the big suits learn?

asexualchangeling,

So long as a significant portion of users stay and pay, they probably won't tbh

nothacking,

I think they know and don't care. First they make a good platform to attract users, then exploit the users and run away with the money. They know that making moves like this will eventually kill the platform, and don't care; They can always make a new platform under a different name and repeat. This happens to all platforms owned by publicly traded companyes, because they are obliged to make money for the shareholders.

oishiiburger,

I think the elephant in the room is that endless year-over-year growth is unteneble and mathematically impossible. So as the suits get their hands on more and more, they are actually kind of stuck. That means e.g. reddit is unable to operate as normal, not necessarily because they lose money, but because they can’t hit unrealistic targets.

caffinz,

Thanks for the welcome! I was a little standoffish about signing up but then found an app for it and it honestly feels like reddit should at this point. (For those curious, it's Jerboa for Lemmy on the play store)

Ilikemoney,

I'm hoping this new influx of users helps to improve jerboa over time. It pretty as it is, but some areas could use attention.

Deiv,

I wonder if there are any other app alternatives. This one is nice, but lacks most features that many of the 3rd party apps had for Reddit

cascadia,

Lemmur is another one I've heard recommended for Android.

asexualchangeling,

Lemmur is no longer being maintained, I'd love it if some of the apps that are about to not work on reddit anymore switched to lemmy though coughinfinitycough

jarfil,

That's a pity, I had Lemmur installed and was wondering why it wouldn't workm IMHO a better name for a Lemmy app than "jerboa".

asexualchangeling,

Yeah I tried it too before I found out, imo one thing lemmy really needs is a selection of usable apps like mastodon has and reddit is about to throw away

Squiglet,

Would be nice to have all 3rd party apps adhering to lemmy that would be a bg fuck you to reddit and would bring so many people here.

KanyeLoveTaylor,

It's about time. They will

NeonBlue,

Someone point me to the nsfw instance that allows porn. I just don't see lemmy being a viable alternative to reddit at this point.

the_protagonist,

Is there any?

NeonBlue,

don't think there is

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

Good. We don't need it.

bilb,
@bilb@lemmy.ml avatar

I do think it would be interesting to try to run a general-purpose instance that operates with the same global rules (more or less) as Reddit. The reason I can't imagine doing it myself is that admin duties on such an instance is rather daunting.

zekiz,

I think thats against the rules for some reason. Probably because they don't want to moderate all that

dessalines,

Yep, we don't have time to moderate that. This is a mostly dev-run instance, which means time spent moderating, is time not spent coding.

monkeydog453,

This is the first thing I tried to find, tbh. I agree it won't be a viable alt without.

Spacebar,

I'm 51 and started using the internet before HTML was a thing. This feels polished but also old school in a usenet / mud / telnet kind of way.

I'm liking it a lot.

018118055,

Cancelled my Reddit premium renewal (it's 10 months away but still...) and donated with the link above.

elight,

Good idea! Done!

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Lemmy is fun!

slides £20 over to the reddit enhancement suite team to come over

buda,

That would really be awesome. I feel like Lemmy needs some UX improvements. It also needs an iOS mobile app

artillect,
artillect avatar

I've been messing around with some userscripts and custom CSS to help improve the UX a bit (and make the UI a bit more compact), I bet we could get some people together to work on a "Lemmy Enhancement Suite"

nachtigall,

It also needs an iOS mobile app

There is mlem (only on TestFlight yet).

GuyDudeman,
@GuyDudeman@lemmy.ml avatar

It has potential. Hopefully the creator of Apollo is able to jump in on that somehow and make it better. Heck, I'd love to help out with it myself.

nachtigall,

If Apollo was only open source, one could probably even port it. Heck, if there's enough momentum from Reddit to Lemmy, it might become attractive for the dev.

Aragorn,

I'm so tired of Reddit, so here I am trying this out!

swarrior216,

Hello everybody! I was a Digg refuge, now I'm a Reddit refuge. This is pretty neat that its not funded by a company and relies on volunteers. I think this is going to be a good place. I was wondering if there is an app for IOS?

Surreal, (edited )

Would love a native iOS application. Maybe @christianselig could be convinced as the brilliant creator of Apollo!

chucha,

Testing, is this on?

Amir,
@Amir@lemmy.ml avatar

I can see your comment so yes I guess?

Macc,

Hi!

Skotic,

Testing.. 1, 4. I wanna figure all this out before i invest in setting up my own :D

baronvonj,
@baronvonj@lemmy.ml avatar

I went from Slashdot to Fark to Digg to Reddit. Already found the Fediverse as @baronvonj after recent changes over on Twitter.

As my user bio says I dabble in guitar and watch rugby (US MLR, go SaberCats) and hockey (NHL). For reading it’s mostly fantasy, with The Witcher and Discworld being my most recent books, but I also enjoy scifi. I tend to be more visual (ie TV and movies) due to ADHD though. Video games with a strong narrative are great. Games like the Horizon series (Zero Dawn, Forbidden West), Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed, Witcher, and Zelda Breath of the Wild.

potato_salad,

Been exploring Lemmy for the past hour or so... actually pretty impressed with what I see. Hope it manages to take off!

bahcodad,

I've just moved here from reddit. I've read the documentation introduction but I'm also an idiot.

Could someone please explain how this works in super simple terms? Sort of eli5

Barbarian, (edited )

I'm a newbie as well, so take this with a grain of salt.

Lemmy is a language. Different "reddits" (called instances from this point on) can talk to any other instance that the moderation team hasn't banned. Every instance has their own rules, settings and moderation teams. Every instance can make "subreddits" (sublemmies). You can contribute to any sublemmy on any instance as long as they haven't banned your instance or your user.

What this means in practice is that if you don't like the moderators, go make your own instance or find one with like-minded people. If the moderators of an instance are not happy with the contributions of another instance as a whole, they can ban that. Assuming they're talking to (federated with) another instance, it's seamless and you can comment and post with all those people too.

exterstellar,

So are we gonna go with "sublemmy" from now on? 😀

exterstellar,

I'm going to use e-mail as an analogy.

"Lemmy" is analogous to "e-mail".

Each lemmy "server" or "instance" is the analogy of an email server. E.g. "lemmy.ml" or "beehaw.org" is equivalent to "gmail.com" or "hotmail.com" or "us.gov" or whatever email server.

You can use any email server to look at any email, the same way you can use any lemmy server to look at any lemmy post or community. You can use any email app to access any of your email accounts and view any email, the same way you can use any lemmy app to access any of your lemmy accounts to browse any lemmy post/commu ity.

If you currently use Gmail, and Google becomes evil, you can switch to Yahoo or Hotmail and still use email like usual. In the same way, if Lemmy.ml becomes evil you can switch to Beehaw.org and keep reading lemmy posts.

*** note that "lemmy" (the platform) and "lemmy.ml" (the instance) are not the same thing. It's kinda confusing, like if there's an "email" server called "email.com"

Barbarian,

Your explanation is much clearer than mine, thanks!

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